


The Holmes Family Secret

by Szarka



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: ALL THE HOLMES CHILDREN ARE AUTISTIC!!!, AU, As in it is set in Victorian England, Autistic Character, Autistic Eurus Holmes, Autistic Mycroft Holmes, Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Eurus ISN'T an evil mastermind, Gen, Holmes and Watson are in a queerplatonic relationship, I mean that it pretty obvious, Internalised ableism, POV John Watson, Period-Typical Ableism, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sherlock (TV) Season/Series 04 Fix-it, and Mycroft isn't the one who locked her away, and everything is like the Sherlock Holmes version I pieced together in my head, at least how the secret sister arc could have been done better, because of course they are, like seriously, of sorts, they were all HOW old at that time?!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25466617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Szarka/pseuds/Szarka
Summary: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson have a late night discussion, and he tells him about his sister.Or: The concept of Eurus Holmes is great, love it, but the execution didn't make ANY sense, so I spent a little over three years fantasizing about how I would have done it. Meaning it's all set in my headversion of the Sherlock Holmes mythos, it is still the 18th century and everything is different. Only tangentially has got anything to do with the BBC Sherlock TV series.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (Queerplatonic)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	The Holmes Family Secret

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo.... *Deep Breath* I have FEELINGS and OPINIONS about the character of Eurus Holmes.
> 
> For those who haven't seen season 4 of BBC's Sherlock, it is revealed that Sherlock has got a secret sister he himself didn't know anything about, and that she is both incredibly clever and a stone-cold criminal mastermind. It's... Sherlock season 4. Beautiful series, but let's face it, that one is a mess. (I still get a knot in my brain each time I try to think about it.)
> 
> So, I personally LOVE the idea of Sherlock Holmes having a secret sister who is severely disabled. I think that it opens up a lot of possibilities and interesting things to explore, especially because I firmly headcanon Holmes as Autistic. However, I also think that BBC's Sherlock executed it very badly, both in that there wasn't enough build-up and that they used some tropes that are really harmful while writing neurodivergent characters. They also didn't spend enough time exploring the idea and her character, and there were some parts (like Mycroft's role in the whole story) that just plain didn't make any sense.
> 
> Long story short, I have spent over three years thinking about this, and how I would have done it instead, which also means that I placed in in my own personal canon instead of any established Sherlock Holmes adaptation. Then somewhat over a month ago I suddenly felt the strong urge to write it down. No idea why, or why now. 
> 
> Here is the result.

The grandfather clock hanging on the wall of the living room had chimed eight and was well on it’s way to nine, and my good friend Sherlock Holmes still hadn’t moved from his chair on the evening I was to learn one of his most closely guarded secrets. He’d sat down three hours previously, just after we’d gotten home from our task that day, the interrogation of a murder witness who was currently looked after in a certain mental asylum which I for privacy’s sake will not disclose any further information about. Holmes hadn’t gotten up since, nor had he spoken or done anything else safe for staring silently into mid-air. 

By that point in time, I had known my friend for some years already, and was therefore familiar enough with his moods, so his odd behavior didn’t worry me too much. Holmes had sometimes a tendency to get a little lost in his own mind, and needed time and quiet to find his way out again. Rushing him would do no good. 

Now, I must confess that in the time we’d known each other, two or three times he had gotten in too deep and needed my help finding back to reality again. But even if that were the case now, which, given how rarely it had happened in the past, I thought to be highly unlikely, three hours were nowhere near long enough to require my intervention. Therefore, I just went on with my evening as normal, if maybe a bit more quietly than I usually do.

We usually eat dinner together, and although I knew that my friend wouldn’t mind if I didn’t wait for him, I found that I had no desire to dine alone. Mrs Hudson, who knew Holmes even better (or at least longer) than I did and was just as familiar with this particular mood of his, had been kind enough to prepare us something that could be enjoyed cold just as much as when it was still warm, and then left, assuring me that I could call on her at any time should need arise. I read through the evening paper and looked through my notes of the day, and finally, when Holmes still showed no sign of movement, I sat down and ate my fill of dinner.

By the time that I finished, Holmes still hadn’t moved.

He was sitting curled up in his chair, even more so than he normally did, and held his violin in his arms, but he wasn’t playing. Instead, he just sat there and ran his long fingers absentmindedly over the smooth wood. I sincerely doubt that he himself noticed what he was doing.

I have to admit, our day had indeed been long and exhausting. We had gotten up and left early, and our destination was far from a pleasant place. I fancy myself as not being overly sensitive. I am a doctor, have been a soldier, and have seen horrors both in war and in the privacy of my patients’ homes, and on top of that, some of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes had indeed forced me to confront the ugliness of the criminal world. Of all of these things, I have come out of undamaged, with nothing more to show than a few nightmares. Yet even I hate mental asylums. It’s the atmosphere of those places, it surrounds and suffocates me.

However, the effect the asylum had on me was negligible compared to what it had on Holmes.

People who are less familiar with my friend than I am probably wouldn’t have noticed it, as on the exterior, he acted very much the same as he usually does. He was bright, and smart, and his questions to the point and revealed the information we had come for. He was polite, as he always is, and didn’t require my assistance for staying within the social norms. The nurses we’d met were all charmed, I don’t have a doubt about that.

But, and I find myself having difficulties pinning down exactly why I know this, he wasn’t himself.

There is something about Sherlock Holmes that sets him apart from other people. I have noticed this the very first time I had met my friend, and the more time I spent trying to understand him, the more I have grown convinced that this was what drew me to him in the first place. It is a spark that burns brighter than any man or woman I have ever met, and at its brightest I sometimes worry that it is hot enough to consume my friend completely. It is that spark that during our time in the asylum had dulled almost to the point of invisibility. I have, in my previous stories, often marveled at my dear friend’s ability to change and transform himself. This kind of transformation, however, I have never seen before, for he seemed to become less himself without actually altering his appearance. It was as if he had pulled everything that makes him so amazing and unique back into himself, and only left us a facade of a person who was similar to him, but definitely not him.

It had been many hours since we’d left the asylum, and his spark hadn’t started to shine again.

It worried me, but it was not the only one of my concerns.

There is a certain method that my friend sometimes falls back on, one that I cannot approve of, neither as a doctor, nor as his friend. Holmes’ use of drugs had been the reason for many a fight between us, with sometimes Mrs Hudson getting involved, usually to take my side, I am happy to report. Eventually, we had come to a compromise: Holmes would not completely stop taking the drugs, but it is me, not him who will administer them, and I am to keep a detailed log of what he takes and when. This way, we hope to avoid what happens to many others, namely the escalation of the first recreational, later compulsory use of drugs to a point where it destroys both the body and mind.

It is not that I do not trust my friend. On the contrary, my trust in him is absolute to the point that, as he himself puts it  _ becomes a liability because it interferes with your critical thinking, Watson. _ But he _ had _ been in a near-trance all evening, and I would be a very poor doctor, and an even poorer friend indeed, if I didn’t make sure he hadn’t broken our arrangement.

I knelt down in front of his chair, and gently cupped his face, turning it to the light of the lamp.

“Holmes. Look at me.”

The look in his grey eyes was guarded, but sharp. I sighed in relief, and gently ran my thumb along where it was resting on his cheekbone, before letting go of him.

“Are you in pain?”

Holmes shook his head.

“Do you need anything?”

Another headshake.

I got up, and poured him a cup of tea. It had grown cold, just as the dinner had. I gently took the violin, which he was still cradling without playing, from his hand, and placed both on the small table that is so well reachable from both our chairs.

“I need you to drink something.”

In my published stories, I have described my friend’s tendency to go without food or drink for a longer period of time as an admirable power. I lied. It isn’t admirable, it is terrifying, and it harms Holmes more than it helps him. He doesn’t have any control over when it happens, but it usually is when he is deep enough in a case to forget everything else. It is then up to me then to make sure he takes in enough nutrients to keep him from falling over from hunger or thirst. Luckily to both of us, most cases don’t last long enough to become dangerous in this aspect.

Holmes looked a little hesitating, but he did take the cup and drank a sip. I left him to it, and went for my next goal, for which I had to enter his room.

I don’t write much about Mrs Hudson. The reason for this is that she only plays a marginal role in our adventures. Her role in our lives however is of an importance that cannot be understated, and I know that, were I inclined to change the subject of my tales, I could just as easily fill entire newspapers with her adventures as I can with mine and Holmes’. 

Mrs Hudson has many hobbies, between which she alternates at her fancy. Many of them are of creative nature, but she also loves charity. Since I’ve known her, I have seen her support the poor, the orphans, the widowed, the disabled, immigrants, prostitutes and some others. I have also witnessed her attempts to draw, paint, sew, embroider, and prepare dishes from cuisines all over the world. She also takes interest in music, literature, cares for flowers, and I could continue this list for as long as I like. She usually stays focused on one thing long enough to get a good image of what it is, and then moves over to the next one.

The first Christmas after I’d made her acquaintance, she’d gifted both Holmes and me with a very ugly blanket of her own making that had the special feature of having countless little wooden balls sewn in regular distances within them. This makes both blankets unusually heavy. At first, I thought nothing of it except that it was one of her many experiments, but in time, I have found, to my surprise, that the weight of the blanket gives me some level of comfort which I very direly need when I awaken from a nightmare. Holmes appears to love his blanket (which, if I may say so, is even more hideous than mine) even more than I do, and it is not rare that I see him wrap himself in it. He once mentioned to me that it helps ease his tension, and that was exactly what I suspected he needed just now.

I found the blanket in the narrow gap between the wardrobe and the wall, just wide enough for a man as slender as Holmes to fit in if he accepts that his shoulders would be pressed against both. I took it, and went to my room to fetch my own, stopping for a moment to check on my friend. He had, to my great pleasure, drank all his tea. I gently spread the blanket over him, and Holmes pulled it tight around himself as he curled even deeper into his chair.

The rest of the evening passed silently, but not uncomfortably. Holmes didn’t move from his position in his chair, and I sat nearby in my own with a book. I didn’t want to leave my friend on his own, as it was clear to me that his brilliant mind was currently processing something, and whatever it might be, I had no doubts that it was important. Once he was done, he would want to talk to me about it, and I wanted to hear what he had to say. Why my presence helps him to articulate his thoughts, I don’t know, and I doubt that he himself does, but the fact is that he likes talking to me when he is thinking. Me, specifically, as I have heard him complain before that other people are not good enough listeners. It is true that I like listening to him. His brilliance never ceases to enchant me, and I must also confess that I learned much from him, and have much to learn still. That evening, I knew I was in for some important information. I suspected it to be about the murder case we were working on. Little did I know that the actual subject weighing on Holmes’ mind was of an entirely different nature, and of more gravity still than our case. But it  _ was _ important, in that much I was right. Sherlock Holmes may have very sharp instincts concerning his profession, but mine are equally sharp when it comes to reading my dear friend.

The clock ticked, then it chimed, then it kept ticking. My usual bedtime came and passed, and Holmes was still staring into mid-air. I held out until midnight, then gave up, put my book aside and stood up to head towards the stairs, pausing only to put out the lamp. Holmes never minded the dark.

I was halted by a noise behind my back. As I turned to look, I saw that the sudden change of light seemed to have finally roused Holmes from the depths of his mind, and he was currently struggling to get into a more upright position, not much more than a silhouette in the dark.

“What time is it?” he asked, his voice still a bit distant, as if he’d only just woken up from a deep sleep.

“Just past midnight.”

“Oh dear,” said Holmes. “I didn’t realize.”

I smiled fondly to myself, counting on the darkness to hide my features, and sat back in my chair. The moment I’ve waited for all evening had finally come. Even in the darkness, I fancy myself to know my friend well enough to be able to tell which exact moment he realized what the reason for my presence at such a late hour in our living room was.

“Did you stay awake just for me?”

“Don’t worry, dear boy,” I assured him. “It was no bother.”

“I am sorry, Watson. I never meant to cost you your sleep.”

“I said it was no bother. What were you thinking about?”

Silence.

“Holmes?”

“I’m here. I wasn’t drifting off again.”

“I say, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Watson, don’t worry. It just was a long day.”

It had been, I must concede. However, it had been a long day by  _ my _ standards, which were different from that of Sherlock Holmes, and most certainly different from that of Sherlock Holmes  _ on a case _ . It had been a long day in that we had to get up early, and that the trip to the asylum took us some time, and the interview, while not difficult in on itself, had been with a man who was clearly disturbed and had trouble recollecting things. It had been long because all the nurses had flocked around us, eager for some innocent excitement in their otherwise difficult work life, and I had to find a way of satisfying their curiosity without them invading our work or our personal privacy. For an ordinary man such as myself, it had been a long day.

But Sherlock Holmes was no ordinary man, and therefore his experiences couldn’t be measured by the standards of ordinary men. My friend was a man for whom it was more exhausting to spend a day idly at home than to purchase a criminal in the pouring rain with no more than three hours sleep in the past two days. He was a man who lived for his passion, and his passion was his work, therefore working filled him with energy rather than draining him of it. For a man like Sherlock Holmes, the day we’d had should have been quite the opposite of “a long day”.

“I don’t like mental asylums,” admitted he finally, in a much lower voice. It didn’t quite explain his strange mood, but it did offer me some insight.

“You are not alone,” I told him, hoping to be of some reassurance. Mental asylums are bleak places that don’t bring joy to any and healing but to a few. It is a very bad solution as to what to do with our mentally ill, but they are better than both prisons or the homes of a family who cannot care for the patient. At least in an asylum, there are trained nurses and doctors, and… 

I won’t lie. As a medical man myself, I know that these professionals are burdened with a situation they are not equipped to handle. After all, it is not that the medical community isn’t aware of these problems. One of my friends for example has dedicated his life exposing the flaws in the system in the hopes that they can be fixed. 

“I know,” said Holmes in an uncharacteristically thin voice, like that of a child who has been scalded by his mother and is now trying to hold back it’s tears. “I apologize…”

I am still ashamed of my reaction to this day, for it was both unlike me and unjustified in this situation. For what it’s worth, I blame the late hour and the fact that Holmes’ strange behavior put me on edge.

I snapped at him.

“For  _ what _ ?”, asked I, in definitely too loud and too hostile of a tone. “For being a normal human for once and letting something affect you?”

It was dark, but still I could see Holmes flinch.

“I’m sorry,” muttered I. “That was uncalled for.”

“And yet you are right,” said Holmes. “I  _ am _ being ridiculous.”

It was a rather scary thing to see him in this state. The Sherlock Holmes I know is confident and unafraid to claim his space and everybody’s attention. He likes showing off, as I have reported countless times already. He believes in himself, even if nobody else does. What Sherlock Holmes does not do is curl up in his chair under a blanket and try to make himself as small as possible. 

I desperately wanted to get him out of this state, and yet I couldn’t. The only thing I could do was to offer him all the reassurance I could.

“I am certain you are not,” said I, paying attention to keep my voice calm this time. “You always have a good reason for your reactions. Holmes, would you like to talk about it?”

“I would,” said Holmes. “If it is you asking, I would.”

That… That  _ really _ didn’t sound comforting.

“Whatever you want to tell me.” I noted absently that I didn’t feel tired any more. Instead, my chest was swelling with the same curious excitement I always feel at the beginning of a new case, although this time, it was largely dampened by a swirling cloud of worry.

Holmes was silent for a bit, apparently collecting his thoughts.

“You must realize, Watson,” begun he finally, “that this is a difficult subject for me to talk about. I have lived decades with shame, and although I have tried to come to terms with it, it still has got its power over me.”

This was getting even more disquieting. Sherlock Holmes is not a man to be governed by shame. He causes me enough headache with this, as neither the disdain of his fellow citizens nor any possible legal consequences are enough to make him rethink his actions, leaving me no other choice than to be the voice of reason. Thinking of all the things I’ve seen him do while on a case, I had been certain that the concept of shame was foreign to him, at least as far as emotions go that don’t serve as a motivation for murder.

I didn’t say anything and waited for Holmes to continue talking.

“We both barely ever mention our families. You have been kind enough to tell me a little about your parents, though, and I am very grateful for that. But I have never returned the favor.”

“I know your brother”, pointed I out.

“You do. What you don’t know is that I have also a sister.”

Holmes was silent for a moment, letting his words sink in.

“The reason you don’t know about her is that my entire family spent considerable time, money and effort into trying to conceal her existence. I doubt that anyone but the most dedicated professional could find evidence of her ever being born.”

The bad premonition that so far had materialized as a weight on my chest had risen and was now pressing my throat shut. I swallowed hard.

“What happened?”

“She went mad, and my parents felt the need to dispose of her before it could all too badly damage their social image.”

Silence.

Holmes has got this habit of being both brutally honest and very direct while conveying information that is so sensitive it asks for the opposite of both. I wonder whether he realized that he was making that mistake again. But when he continued with his story, it was still as calm and detached as if he was talking about any other family.

“My family had always some issues with where to put their priorities, and they tended to trample people in the ground if they went in a different direction. Which is one of the reasons I tried, and to this day, am still trying, to get away from them. Mycroft is closer to their legacy, but he too insists on ignoring all of their heritage.”

He pulled himself a little more up in his chair, into a sitting position.

“You see, Watson, my parents were wealthy. We lived in a big house, and they only spent time with us at dinner. For the rest of the day, they paid people to look after us. A nanny, mostly, but the rest of the staff also kept an eye on what we were doing. I am still very grateful to them for doing so, because my first nanny was dangerously delusional. It was a superstition, you see. How familiar are you with the concept of changelings?”

“I have read about them. The stupidity of the parents never ceases to horrify me.”

I am a man of science, not of superstitions, and stories told by the uneducated common folk are far from my concern. Yet I, as everyone else who follows the news, have read about multiple cases of parents who insist that their child is in fact a fairy in disguise, the real child having been stolen away as a newborn.

My medical knowledge is mostly focused on adults, but I am of course familiar enough with children to treat their more common ills. And I like children, just like any other man does. Maybe that is why the changeling stories always horrify me this much.

“You would be surprised about how far a parent will go to make their child conform to normality, Watson.”

“I’m not sure I would, Holmes.”

He sighed loudly.

“Maybe not, no. But the story of my family is one of those sad testimonies, although one of the less tragic ones. You see, our nanny was convinced that my sister was a changeling.”

Cold horror washed over me, and a dread of what I was about to hear. There is one very prominent way in which changeling stories tend to end, and I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy to witness that within their family, least of all my dearest friend.

“No…”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. To her credit, she  _ did _ have most of the symptoms. She was a little creepy, my newborn sister. She is little more than two years younger than I am, so I don’t remember much about that time, but I do know that it was impossible to touch her without setting off a screaming fit. She cried for seemingly no reason. She didn’t look directly at us, or she would stare at our every move, sometimes it was the one and at others the other.”

“There are natural reasons for that.”

“Of course. And from what little I know, neither my brother nor I have been very different as infants. But I don’t know much. As I said, nobody in my family ever talked about this.”

I nodded. Our eyes had grown mostly used to the dark, and I knew that my friend wouldn’t have any more difficulty reading me as he did in the daytime.

“One of my earliest memories is the four of us together in a room, when I was two years old. Mycroft was sitting in a corner with the newspaper. He must have been five years old at the time, and since no-one has taught him how to read yet, I am pretty certain that the adults assumed that he was looking at the pictures. Maybe that’s what he first did, but eventually, he ended up teaching himself to read. My sister, still a newborn, was in her crib, watching us, but mostly she was just staring into the air. I myself was sitting on the windowsill, playing with my collection of rocks that I had gathered in the garden. I was trying to row them up according to size. Meanwhile, my nanny was trying to boil water in a nutshell instead of a kettle.”

“I beg your pardon, she was  _ what _ ?”

“You said you were familiar with the superstition, Watson.”

“Not with all the details. Just what they write about in the paper.”

Holmes sighed.

“The easiest way to discover that your child is a fairy is to amaze them by doing something extremely irrational in their presence. Boiling water in a nutshell has apparently been used with success in the past. The fairy will then speak to mock the human, and as soon as one knows, one can get back the real child. You have read about how that is accomplished.”

You torture the fairy, mostly by exposing it to hot iron, or just heat. After a while, the fairy will give up and return to where it came from, leaving behind the real child.

People had been  _ killed _ by that belief.

“Christ,” muttered I.

“Exactly,” agreed Holmes. “I have often thought about how easily this incident could have turned into a disaster, and marveled about our luck that it didn’t. Somehow, word had gotten out about my nanny’s  _ experiment _ , as she’d called it, and she was fired the very next day. I still don’t know how that happened, but I suspect that it was my brother’s doing, unknowing as it probably was. He couldn’t speak at that point, but he had taught himself to write as well as read, and he’d told the gardener of our nanny’s plans, who then realised what was going on and alerted my parents.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing. Our nanny was fired and gone by the next evening. It didn’t take more than a few days until we got a new nanny, and our lives continued as usual. I never suspected that something might be wrong.”

“Well, you were only a small child yourself.”

“Indeed. And a blissfully ignorant one, if I may add.”

“I’m not quite sure what else you expect a two-year old to be.”

“I did not say that there was something wrong with it, only that I was not very much aware of the things going on around me. Even back then, my brother had been better than me in this regard.”

Although time has provided me with ample evidence, I still have difficulties believing that Mycroft Holmes is in any way or manner better than Sherlock Holmes, probably because I find it hard to imagine that anyone could rival my friend in anything that matters. He calls it my blind spot, thinking of him as too perfect, and he has warned me many times that one day, this blind spot will be used against me, and per extension, him. This however is one thing I can’t help myself with.

“You are too hard on yourself, Holmes.”

“Am I? Mycroft had known that something was wrong with us. I didn’t.”

“There was nothing  _ wrong _ with you! It is that woman who had been delusional!”

“No, Watson, it was us. Our next nanny made sure that we knew that, only she told us that we were doing it deliberately. After all, we were bad children. I believed her. My brother did not. My sister was too deep in her own world both to notice and to care. 

She loved birds. She was always flapping her arms, pretending to be flying. I liked pirates at the time, so we would often play that she was my talking parrot. Which was difficult, because she still couldn’t talk at the age of seven, so we had to come up with solutions to make it seem as if she did.”

I could hear the smile in his voice at the fond memory. But what caught my attention was a different detail.

“Your sister couldn’t talk at the age of seven?”

“We all started to talk relatively lately. My brother hadn’t said a word until he was nine years old, and then immediately spoke in complete sentences that would have not been out of place in the newspaper. I was four, and my vocabulary not as spectacular as his, but right after I said my first words I could communicate in complete sentences, like any other four-years old . My sister… To my best knowledge, she still can’t speak more than a few words to this day.”

This was strange at first, but after the first surprise passed, it made complete sense. I knew the Holmes brothers. They were the kind of people who would do nothing in the right order, not even something as simple as learning to talk.

“Our parents kept our education as private as possible, and our contact with other children was limited. I don’t think that any of us minded, as we preferred being alone any ways. More specifically, we preferred being alone to being with the kind of children our parents wanted us to associate with. I had read about friendships in books, and would sometimes daydream of having one myself. But it was the same kind of daydream as running away and joining a pirate ship, seeming possible on the surface but in reality nothing but a wild story. I was a happy child, Watson, I really was, you can stop pitying me right now.”

I don’t know what had given me away, but it is true that I felt my heart clench in sympathy for the little boy my friend had once been. I myself had grown up with many children to play with, and will always fondly remember those happy games.

“Our educators paid close attention to our behavior, and we would often get scalded for acting out of line, although nobody ever bothered to explain to us where exactly that line was and why breaching it was unacceptable. The only explanations we would ever get is that that is not how good children act. And they did act differently, in many ways, I could observe that whenever my family had visitors or paid others a visit. I’d thought that the only reason for those differences was that we were ill-mannered while they were not, and should put more effort into learning how to act well. You know us, Watson. I suppose I don’t need to say that our differences went deeper than that.”

I wasn’t quite certain what ‘differences’ Holmes meant exactly, but yes, knowing him and his elder brother, I could easily imagine ways in which they would not have been like other children.

“I was nine years old when my sister broke. She was seven, at the time, but maybe this doesn’t mean much, as her development didn’t follow that of a normal seven-years-old. In some ways, mostly academic in nature, she was more advanced, in others, less. 

My parents would often invite other families to visit them, and let us children play together. It was fun sometimes, but often we wanted to do something else, and if we tried to retreat to our own corner, we got told off for misbehaving. A certain week in December, we had visitors almost every day, and by Sunday, we just wanted to be left alone. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. We had multiple families over, and had gone on a trip for which we were made to wear our best clothes. They were very uncomfortable. Also, we weren’t allowed all day to run around the way we wanted to. We were tired and irritated. I know that my brother was struggling because the other children were too loud. It even hurt  _ me _ , and you know how he is with loud noises. My sister was standing at the window, trying to watch the birds. But one of the visiting girls wanted to play with her doll, so she was pestering her, trying to get her attention. She ignored her. The other girl decided that she should take things in her own hands, and the doll was sitting on the windowsill, so she just took it.

This sent my sister into one of her famous screaming fits. We all used to have them as children, and the only way to really calm us down was usually to leave us alone and wait until it passed. Trying to interact with us only tended to escalate the tantrum. Unfortunately, the girl who had taken the doll didn’t know that, so when my sister started to howl at her, she screamed back and yelled insults at her. This of course attracted the attention of all the other children. They all got together in a semi-circle around them and loudly mocked my sister. She tried to go straight for the girl with the doll, and get it back. Somebody tried to keep her from doing it by grabbing her. She hated being touched in the best of circumstances, and now… She started to hit blindly around herself, trying to get free.

I must confess that my memories about the whole incident are somewhat vague. What I do know is that the fight escalated, and at some point, my brother and I both got involved in it. I also know that my sister pushed me into the fireplace, whether it was by accident or on purpose I can not tell. To my luck, there was only a small fire burning at that time, and I didn’t fall into it. I still hurt myself rather badly.

In the meantime, the adults got involved and separated everyone. My sister was still screaming when my father dragged her out of the room. My mother and our nanny both started to fuss around me, and took me to my room, which I was terribly grateful for because it meant that I didn’t have to play with the others any more.”

I listened to the story with horror, wishing beyond all reason that I could do something to spare my friend from this pain.

“By the end of next week, my sister was gone. We were told that she was sent to a school in the countryside, but neither me nor my brother believed it. He told me that it was because she’d misbehaved and kept embarrassing my parents in front of the other adults, and that they didn’t want to have her around any more. He also told me that the same thing would happen to me if I didn’t behave very well. I of course believed him.”

“Holmes!,” exclaimed I. My friend shrugged.

“I don’t blame my brother. He believed what he said to me that day. It is easy to forget because he’s older than I am, but he too was but a child back then, and he suffered much of the same damage as I did.

I spent the next few years doing my very best to learn how to be good like the other children, and I managed well enough so that by the age of thirteen, I could pass as one of them. I never quite stopped being afraid that my parents would send me away, but as I grew older, that feeling morphed into me only having a bad conscience whenever I indulged in one of my more eccentric behaviors. I have spent the last decade trying to unlearn this, and I mostly succeeded.

We barely ever spoke of my sister after that. Our nanny drilled us not to, and she and my parents put in a lot of effort to erase every trace of her. Her room, her toys, her clothes, they all disappeared without any trace. With time, I had learned that the mere existence of my sister is a shameful secret, one that our family can not afford getting out. After all,” and his voice turned very bitter at these words, “we have a  _ reputation _ to uphold.”

Every family has their dark secrets, my friend once told me after one of our earliest adventures. Rich, respectable families even more so than poor ones. That’s how they stay rich and respectable.

I hadn’t thought that he was hiding a deep dark secret himself.

Not Holmes.

“I was seventeen when my parents passed, my brother was twenty and already a successful career man. I on the other hand had been struggling on multiple fronts from the time that I left for boarding school. You see, despite my greatest efforts, I never actually was like the other children, and trying to pretend otherwise was both very tiring and, in the end, futile. But that is a different story, one I’d rather not burden you with.

While going through the documents they left behind, we found the name of the institution they’d sent my sister to, and the regular reports my father had been getting about her well-being. She’d been sent to a farm in the Scottish Highlands, one that was isolated enough from everything to safely host people like her without attracting attention. There are a couple of farms like these, and wealthy, well-connected families use them to dispose of their unpresentable members without risking to attract the attention they would if they sent them to a proper asylum. To this day, my sister cannot talk, and has tantrums like the one I just described. As far as I know, my parents hadn’t visited her once.

My brother did visit her immediately, and keeps doing so on a regular basis. He told me that she is relatively happy and an useful help on the farm, and that her intellect is seriously underestimated by the people around her who only see that she can’t talk and has unusual behavior patterns. In fact, according to my brother, she is clever, and if challenged properly, her intellect can rival or even surpass both his and mine.”

He took a deep breath.

“I wouldn’t know. I never visited her. My brother asked me to, sure, on multiple occasions, but I refused every one. You see, I don’t dare to meet her again. Sometimes, I can be the most despicable coward.”

I wanted to protest that this wasn’t true, that he was the bravest and cleverest man I ever had the pleasure of knowing, but Holmes waved me silent before I even could make a sound.

“I am, Watson. I have spent my life tracking down criminals, but when it comes to my own sister, who has been wrongly convicted, I cannot face her.”

We were silent for a while, the only sound in the room our breathing and the ticking of the clock.

“Is that why you reacted so strangely this morning at the asylum?” I asked finally. “Did it remind you of your sister?”

“No. Well, obviously it did. But most of all, it reminded me of  _ me _ . You see, Watson, I am not all that different from her.”

I instinctively wanted to protest, but stopped myself. I love my friend dearly, and admit that I am blind to many of his shortcomings, but even I know that he is mentally unstable at times. It is never big or serious enough to be a problem, but if it were a little stronger… 

They say that the line between genius and insanity is a thin one, and Sherlock Holmes is walking that line. On the side of genius, certainly, but it would be so easy for him to trip and fall over to the other side, the side his sister is on.

“Were you ever…”

“Locked up in one? No. But I have been close, closer than I care to admit. 

I told you before that I had been struggling when I was seventeen. It got only worse after that, and I reached a very, very dark low. I was lucky to have my brother and one or two friends help me when I needed it the most. Without their help, I wouldn’t have gotten my life back. Without them, I would not be here now, but in a place just like the one we visited today. It is a terrifying thought, isn’t it? And I still rely on other people to keep me sane. I must confess that you are one of them.”

I know. I think that deep down, I’ve always known, just never verbalized it.

“Who else?” I asked. This was not a discussion we were likely to have ever again, and I needed to know this. I needed to know who I can count on should the biggest need arise. “Your brother? Mrs Hudson?”

“Yes,” said Holmes. “And also Inspector Lestrade, much as he tends to irritate me. The children. And one or two friends I have made back in my youth. I know that I can call on them should the need arise.”

“Could you make a list?”

“I could. But why?”

“My dear boy, I promise that I will do everything in my power to keep you from a similar fate than your sister, if you’d have my help. But I will need to know more about the things you never told me. Starting with the people I can count on for help should the worst happen.”

He was very still for a long moment, and I could feel his sharp grey eyes pierce me through the dark.

“All right, Watson. Thank you.”

“You are welcome. My dear fellow, I would do anything for you. You know that.”

He looked away from me.

“I do wish you didn’t feel that way, Watson.”

“That is my decision to make.”

I got up and crossed the distance between us to sit on the elbow rest of Holmes’ chair. He looked up, and I held his gaze. We were sitting there for a long time in quiet camaraderie, staring into each other’s eyes. It was Holmes who looked away first.

“We should retire for the night,” said he, and I was suddenly aware once more of the ticking of the grandfather clock.

“Probably,” said I. Neither of us moved, and when Holmes finally did try to get up, I caught his arm to hold him back.

“Holmes. You should visit her.”

I could feel the tremor that traversed his body, and he tensed. When he spoke, his voice was panicky, and I could feel that he was on the verge of fleeing.

“No. No. I can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

“No!” He finally ripped his wrist from my hand, and recoiled, as much as that is possible sitting in an armchair. “No! I can’t!”

I put both my hands up in what I hoped would be a soothing gesture. There was no point pushing him.

“All right, all right. It’s all right, Holmes.”

He closed his eyes and tried to take some deep breaths, but they were quick and shaky.

“I’m sorry, Watson, I…”

“Sssssssh. It’s all right.”

I reached out to take his hand. He flinched when I touched him, but didn’t pull away. I squeezed his hand, and waited for him to fully calm down.

“Will you allow me to talk to your brother and, if he allows me, go through the papers he has on your sister?”

He nodded without hesitation, and my heart clenched with how much he trusts me. Because he does, my beloved friend, he trusts me so much. He may complain that he is my blind spot, but I am his, too.

“Of course.”

I squeezed his hand one more time.

“Holmes. What is she called?”

He didn’t look away this time, and his voice was calm and steady once more, if somewhat more quiet than it usually is.

“Eurus. Her name is Eurus Holmes.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, that was it. I wouldn't have thought I'd ever write voluntarily from the first person POV, but it actually works better for Holmes and Watson. One day, I will actually get these two well enough to write some really good, proper story for them. I'm not there yet, but I do keep coming back, and it is better each time. I've also noticed how my idea of what I want my version of Holmes and Watson to be like keeps getting more and more complete.
> 
> This is only the beginning of the story. I hope it feels complete the way it is, but the actual story goes on and on. I do not know whether I will ever write it, but I did have to say it once.
> 
> I would also like to add some disclaimer that I didn't do any historical research for this, and am not planning to, either, because then it would just turn into a critique of all the things the Victorians got wrong about mental health.


End file.
